There are dozens of music streaming services available to listen to. One that’s been making a big buzz around Europe and in the US is Spotify. Spotify has just recently been introduced into Canada, and we’ve been using it ever since.

At its heart, Spotify is a subscription based music streaming service with two types of accounts. The Free account allows you to play any song from any artist in their database and stream an unlimited amount of music with advertisements mixed in (kind of like an on-demand radio station). You can listen to entire albums at a time, or if you like more variety, you can enjoy playlists of music that fit a specific genre or mood. The restriction to this type of account also limits you to five skipped songs per hour. If you hit your skipped song limit, you will have to listen to songs in their entirety until the hour is up.

The Premium account costs $9.99/mo and provides higher quality audio playback, removed advertisements, and the ability to store Spotify music for offline playback. The last of these features allows you to download the music you’re listening to onto your smart-phone or tablet or computer, and will let you listen to music offline (like if you’re on a flight or in a scenario that we’re often in, working in a basement with no phone reception!).

Spotify is helping to reduce the amount of music piracy in the industry, which has been climbing steadily since the early 2000’s. Spotify gets money from advertisers to fund the free accounts, and collects money from Premium users directly. Nearly 70% of the total revenue Spotify collects goes back to the Rights Holders of the music. This allows people who don’t want to pay for their music to still listen to it without stealing, and it allows those of us who appreciate the value of high-quality audio, a massive catalog of new and classic music, and still want to enjoy digital music ethically.

So, how do you enjoy Spotify in your home? You can’t just go out and buy a Spotify player and plug it in like you could with CDs or a DVD Player. Many new home theatre receivers have web connectivity, and Spotify already built in. But, many of you may already have everything you need: an Apple TV and an iPad/iPhone. Just download the Spotify app on your iDevice, then use the AirPlay service to stream audio to your Apple TV for enjoyment of unlimited streaming music throughout your speaker system.